It was around 1830 that Captain Henry "Bully" Robinson of Newburgh, New York, returned from Europe with some "pretty little fish" he had bought in France. He used them to stock the pond at his house, where they multiplied, and over the years he gave them to friends. According to local lore, he was the first to import goldfish to the United States.

However, this claim of being the first to bring goldfish to America has been made by (or on behalf) of a range of people. When P. T. Barnum opened the first public aquarium in the USA in 1856, he claimed credit for their introduction. Goldfish, which are native to Asia, were already popular in Europe by the 1600s, so it seems strange that they would have taken so long to reach North America. And they probably didn't.

Webster's dictionary of 1817 mentions goldfish, implying they were something American readers would be likely to encounter. In 1827, author Thomas McKenney included goldfish ponds in his description of the pleasure gardens at Utica, New York. A natural philosophy textbook for schools published in New York in 1838 also mentions them, as part of a physics problem -- the refraction of light makes a goldfish in a glass globe appear to be two fishes. The proliferation of goldfish increased the demand for this particular style of round bowl, which commercial glassworks started producing.

Regardless of how it first ended up in America, how did this little exotic fish become the ultimate affordable pet?

Oddly enough, the government had a lot to do with it. The United States Commission on Fisheries received the first official import of goldfish from Japan in 1878. The Commission was only seven years old then, and as a publicity stunt, it offered free goldfish to D.C. residents. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, these fish were bred in ponds in Washington and Baltimore, and anyone who sent a request through a member of Congress would receive one, along with a glass globe to keep it in.

At the height of this campaign, the Commission was distributing 20,000 fish annually, and nearly a third of households in the District owned pet fish from the Commission. According to a New York Times article from November 1894, "The business of distributing free goldfish to the people of the District of Columbia has become such a tax on the Fish Commission that it appears they must choose between running a goldfish bureau for Washington exclusively and conducting the legitimate work of the bureau."

In the 20th century, goldfish became a staple as prizes at fun fairs. Many American adults can remember seeing rows of single fish in plastic bags next to the sideshow games. It's a less common sight nowadays, likely due to all the fish that expired in hot plastic bags in the backseats of cars, or in the grip of overexcited children.

But the spread of these fish has had unanticipated consequences. Goldfish are members of the carp family. Their radiant color is the result of centuries of breeding -- first in China, where they were allowed to be owned only by members of the Song Dynasty, and then in American pet stores. But goldfish can also interbreed with common carp. When they're flushed down the toilet, or washed away from private ponds, goldfish find their way into American rivers and lakes, where they meet up with their cousins -- the food carp that were brought to American from Europe in the early 19th century.

Together, these fish breed prolifically and disrupt the ecosystem. They scour the bottom of rivers for food, vacuuming up practically everything in sight and leaving very little behind for the native forage fish. They can even eliminate frogs from an area by eating tadpoles. Their success at muscling out native species has made them a concern for conservationists.

As early as 1941, goldfish had become such a menace to game fish in Crystal Lake, California, that the state fish and game commission set out to eradicate them. They dragged the lake with bags containing a temporary paralytic affecting the gills of all fish, which enabled them to separate the goldfish from the other fish in the lake when they floated up to the surface. (The other fish were allowed to remain and recover, while the goldfish were scooped up and killed.) The Crystal Lake colony apparently originated the way many do: with a private individual deciding to set pet goldfish free into a local waterway.

Today, Captain Robinson's goldfish pond might attract a visit from the authorities: New York statutes prohibit placing any fish in a body of water without a permit (indoor aquariums are permitted). Similar laws exist in other states, although many people don't realize they're breaking the law by putting these eye-catching fish in local ponds or streams. However, some jurisdictions have started cracking down.

In May 2010, newspapers reported on Maine resident Cheri Szidat, who unwittingly provoked an anonymous tip to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries when she stocked her private pond with goldfish. "I didn't know it was illegal. I just put my pet goldfish there," Szidat insisted. Officials ended up spraying her $45,000 hobby pond with the chemical Rotenone.

Inexpensive, easy to care for, and attractive to behold, the goldfish has become the ultimate disposable pet. Almost a moving ornament, it's a small, mobile emblem of Orientalism that is also a familiar part of everyday American life. Goldfish are the subject of clichés and jokes, as well as and fraternity hazing rituals, and in countless American homes, they're simply part of the furniture. But that tiny fish tracing circles in its bowl has had a farther-reaching impact than Captain Robinson might ever have imagined.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when they’re adopted, the children of the wealthy grow up to be just as well-off as their parents.

Lately, it seems that every new study about social mobility further corrodes the story Americans tell themselves about meritocracy; each one provides more evidence that comfortable lives are reserved for the winners of what sociologists call the birth lottery. But, recently, there have been suggestions that the birth lottery’s outcomes can be manipulated even after the fluttering ping-pong balls of inequality have been drawn.

What appears to matter—a lot—is environment, and that’s something that can be controlled. For example, one study out of Harvard found that moving poor families into better neighborhoods greatly increased the chances that children would escape poverty when they grew up.

While it’s well documentedthat the children of the wealthy tend to grow up to be wealthy, researchers are still at work on how and why that happens. Perhaps they grow up to be rich because they genetically inherit certain skills and preferences, such as a tendency to tuck away money into savings. Or perhaps it’s mostly because wealthier parents invest more in their children’s education and help them get well-paid jobs. Is it more nature, or more nurture?

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.